Friday, June 10, 2005

A bias toward drug prescription is endemic in medicine. In Canada, there are 5,000 prescription drugs for sale. In the year 2000 in the United States, 173 million people filled 2.2 billion outpatient prescriptions, accounting for $103 billion in expenditures. Each year in Canada and the USA the money spent on prescription drugs increases. There are deep and fundamental problems with drug prescriptions. The problems are located in five groups; the producers, the prescribers, the dispensers, the users and the payers. Drug users are essentially naive and gullible and assume that the other groups have their interests first and foremost in mind. The producers have profit as the main motive.

The prescribers are dependent on the drug producers and remarkably obedient to the producers marketing commands. Some have argued the drug producers now own medicine and simply compete with each other for their market share.

The World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Drugs has 350 entries. The WHO defines essential medicines as those drugs that "satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. They are selected with due regard to public health relevance, evidence on efficacy and safety, and comparative cost-effectiveness." Even if you agree with the WHO drug list, most of the drugs are special purpose agents that have limited applicability. I have long thought that a physician could serve his or her patients best with a list of about 20 well-chosen, and well-understood drugs. As it now stands, primary care physicians prescribe 80% of the 5000 drugs available and understand less than 20 in any detail. Many patients take 6 to 10 prescription drugs daily; the number of drugs increases with age.

The medical management of arterial disease, for example, provides major markets for a variety of expensive prescription drugs. The scientific evidence that links high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes 2 and obesity grows stronger everyday. These are inter-connected diseases caused by eating too much of the wrong food and exercising too little. In Canada, a public financed health care system is too costly and is deteriorating rapidly as budget cuts reduce resources available. The tidal wave of food-related disease threatens to bankrupt health care systems if existing methods of diagnosis and treatment continue to be used.

About Me

Stephen is a physician, author, musician and composer. He has written 19 books in the Alpha Education Series that provide guides to managing the most common diseases. Revision of many books are available as 2017 editions. The books are ordered at Alpha Online in either print versions or as eBook downloads.

Alpha Education Books

These books developed gradually from Dr. Gislason's lecture notes and other presentations. In
1991 Dr. Gislason wrote "Nutritional Therapy, his survey of the theory and concepts
behind his method of diet revision. In 1993 Nutritional Therapy Vol. 2 was published
as a large format book that emphasized the practical instructions required to successfully
solve health problems with diet revision. In 1998, the Core Program was transformed
into the Alpha Nutrition Program. A series of texts acted as interfaces to the program,
describing specific health concerns and were first published under the banner of
Alpha Nutrition Health Education, abbreviated to Alpha Education in 2008. Dr. Gislason
has continued to revise and expand these books into informative guides to common
medical problems.

Persona Books

Dr. Gislason had an early start in the study of philosophy and neuroscience.
At age 16, he decided his main life task would be to pursue understanding the human
mind. In the intervening years, he studied neuroanatomy, neurotransmitters,
electronics, computer science, neuropsychology and at the same time he studied
Buddhist philosophy and practiced a variety of meditation techniques.

Music

He is the chief performer, arranger and studio engineer at Persona Digital Studio. He started the 2500 Band in 1996 . The Persona Classical Ensemble was formed in 2007 to arrange and record pieces by JS Bach, Amadeus Mozart and other composers in the classical repertoire. His book Sound of Music was published in Jan. 2011 with a 2017 revision now available.

He has written that singing, dancing and playing music are the best expressions of humans. His review of popular music brings him pleasure and inspiration to develop new compositions. He is most attracted to beautiful ballads, modern jazz and lyrical melodies. He studied piano for many years, beginning a at age 5. As a child, he was immersed in classical music. In high school he started to play the trumpet in bands and continues to play trumpet and flugelhorn parts on the keyboard. In the early 70s, he learned electronics, began building synthesizers and experimented with psychoacoustics. His study of neuroscience integrated nicely with his study of electronic sound processing and sound processing in the brain.